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  • Trump’s War in the Middle East Has One Clear Winner: China

    Source: Mother Jones
    by Amy Hawkins

    “China has emerged as the sole winner in Asia from the strait of Hormuz crisis, according to a report published on Tuesday. The report by the geopolitical consulting firm Asia Group concluded that China had weathered the storm of the global commodities crisis resulting from the closure of the Middle Eastern waterway, and also stood to gain from the economic and geopolitical trends sparked by the wider conflict. … China’s electric vehicle exports soared by more than 110 percent in May compared with the previous year, while solar shipments in April increased by 60 percent.” (07/01/26)

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/trump-iran-war-middle-east-winner-china-clean-energy/

  • The Hierarchy of Compassion: Who Counts?

    Source: Town Hall
    by Joe Abraham

    “Pete Buttigieg and his family should never have endured a malicious false report that brought police and Child Protective Services to their home, temporarily separated him from his young children, and forced his family through a needless ordeal. Authorities quickly determined the allegations were baseless. The bipartisan condemnation that followed was appropriate. Political leaders from across the country spoke with one voice. Commentators expressed outrage. The message was unmistakable: there are lines that should never be crossed. They were right. But watching the response unfold left me asking a question I have carried since my daughter Katie was killed. Why does our political class know exactly how to respond when one of its own is harmed, yet struggle to summon the same moral urgency when ordinary Americans are actually buried?” (07/01/26)

    https://townhall.com/columnists/joe-abraham/2026/07/01/the-hierarchy-of-compassion-who-counts-n2678594

  • Defining presidential powers in a robust democracy

    Source: Christian Science Monitor
    by staff

    “Among the slew of decisions being released in the days before the United States Supreme Court adjourns for the summer, two focus on the key issue of presidential or executive power. Each ruling relates specifically to a U.S. president’s ability to remove officeholders in agencies established under acts of Congress. In Trump v. Slaughter, the court ruled 6-3 that the president can fire at will the heads or staff of independent regulatory agencies (in this case, the Federal Trade Commission). In Trump v. Cook, however, the court determined 5-4 that the president could not fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board without cause or due process. On the surface, the two rulings seem to be in opposition to each other. Yet both underscore a defining characteristic of American democracy – the delicate yet shifting equilibrium among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that underpins the business of governing.” (06/30/26)

    https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0630/Defining-presidential-powers-in-a-robust-democracy

  • So-Called “Moderate” Dems Must Stop Parroting Trump’s Red-Scare Rhetoric

    Source: Common Dreams
    by Miles Mogulescu

    “President Donald Trump used red-scare rhetoric to denounce the progressive winners in New York’s Democratic primary last week as ‘godless communists’. Rather than explaining that the progressives are not communists in the vein of the Soviet Union or communist China but social democrats in the vein of Scandinavia, a group of so-called ‘moderate’ Democratic politicians piled on to Trump’s red-baiting. Two days after the primaries, this group of 15 corporate Democrats (let’s just call them what they are) attacked the winning Democrats in an open letter drafted by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York proclaiming, ‘we are capitalist, not socialist’. In an interview with the New York Times, Suozzi added ‘that message from Tuesday is not the message that I embrace’.” (07/01/26)

    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democratic-party-moderates

  • Usual suspects wail about SCOTUS ruling upholding states’ rights to ban transgender athletes

    Source: New York Post
    by Michael Goodwin

    “The Supreme Court ruling that upholds states’ rights to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’ sports provoked wailing from the usual suspects. New York Attorney General Letitia James denounced what she called ‘cruel and discriminatory laws targeting the trans community’, and accused the court of deciding to continue on a ‘dangerous and harmful path’. Oh, please.” (06/30/26)

    https://nypost.com/2026/06/30/opinion/michael-goodwin-usual-suspects-wail-about-scotus-ruling-upholding-states-rights-to-ban-transgender-athletes/

  • We became the late 18th Century British. What now?

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by David C Hendrickson

    “In the run-up to America’s 250th anniversary, we’ve witnessed a few amazing spectacles, but not much historical reflection. Insofar as discussions have addressed our history, attention has focused on American statesmen and warriors from back in the day. But there is more to be gained by looking from a different standpoint: that of Britain’s leaders at the time of the American revolution. They had an empire to run, as we now do, not a republic to create. Great Britain had achieved, by 1763, a position widely compared to Rome in its heyday. It had won the great contest with France over control of the interior of North America, gaining Canada and a secure claim to the Mississippi River in the Peace of Paris in 1763. But all was not well.” (07/01/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/america-independence-british-empire/

  • The Ever-Shifting “Cultural Marxism”

    Source: Liberal Currents
    by Roz Milner

    “In recent years the American right’s been inverting phrases taken from the left, taking something that meant well and turning them into cliches. Triggered. Woke. Social justice warrior. Critical race theory. They use these as a shorthand to mock and belittle, while also reducing the left to something separate and less than. At the same time, these phrases are often ill-defined: what is woke, exactly? One may as well ask who leads the oft-cited but hard to find antifa organization. Once one starts looking at how they use these phrases to delegitimize the left, one sees the pattern all over the place: gender ideology, fake news, and perhaps most nefarious of all, cultural Marxism.” (07/01/26)

    https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-ever-shifting-cultural-marxism/

  • Stop Being Funny

    Source: The Dispatch
    by Kevin D Williamson

    “Speaking Sunday night at the Trump Kennedy Center, where he was receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Bill Maher offered an excellent bit of advice for politicians who do not wish to be mocked: ‘Stop being funny.’ It is a simple thing, and a not-so-simple thing. When politicians are being ridiculous, Maher said, ‘I put them in jokes—jokes that work.’ Jokes that work is the key thing. It is axiomatic in comedy that the way to kill a joke is to explain it, but it is worth thinking about why and how Maher’s jokes, and other jokes about politicians, work. If politicians are to stop being funny, then they will need to answer the question: When are politicians funny? … Naked dishonesty in politicians is funny. So is incompetence. So is howling demagoguery. Quiet, unshowy competence is not very funny.” (07/01/26)

    https://thedispatch.com/article/bill-maher-politicians-humor/

  • The Assault on Congress’s Anti-Monopoly Solution

    Source: The American Prospect
    by Sean M Flaim

    “When Congress passed the Sherman Act in 1890, John Sherman told the Senate, ‘If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life’. The act intended to keep concentrated private power from becoming a sovereign authority unto itself. It lasted five years before the Supreme Court took it apart. In United States v. E.C. Knight (1895), the Court held that manufacturing was not commerce and therefore lay beyond the reach of federal antitrust law. The case concerned the American Sugar Refining Company, which by acquisition controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s sugar refining capacity. The Court drew its commerce line precisely where the largest industrial concentration in the country sat, and the trust walked free.” (07/01/26)

    https://prospect.org/2026/07/01/supreme-court-assault-on-congress-anti-monopoly-solution/

  • The Defiant Republic: The Ideological Imperative of a Strong Iran

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by M Reza Behnam

    “The February 2026 Iran war cannot be understood as an isolated event; but rather the outcome of over four decades of coordinated American and Israeli efforts to contain and topple the Islamic Republic. Similarly, Iran’s ability to withstand the military onslaught and emerge victorious must also be situated within that historical context. After weeks of U.S-Israeli bombardment, Iran has shown not only that it has been able to withstand an assault by the world’s strongest militaries, but that it could successfully exact substantial military, geopolitical and economic costs on its adversaries. Despite suffering significant damage, and the martyrdom of senior military commanders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the state survived. Tehran’s ability to maintain institutional continuity and operational resilience despite intense pressures could ultimately reshape the geopolitical landscape of West Asia.” (07/01/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/reza_behnam/2026/06/30/the-defiant-republic-the-ideological-imperative-of-a-strong-iran/

  • The nanny state is sanitising Britain to death

    Source: spiked
    by James Dixon

    “The UK’s landmark Tobacco and Vapes Act, which became law in April this year (and has since been buried by a typically, and very modern, frenetic news cycle), was hailed as a triumph for public health. By permanently phasing out the legal sale of cigarettes to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009, it promises to create the world’s first ‘smoke-free generation’. It’s difficult (though not impossible) to object to this from a medical perspective. … But it’s important to look beyond the medical perspective to what this legislation represents. It is, perhaps, the clearest expression yet of the creeping sanitisation of Britain that has been underway over the past two to three decades.” (07/01/26)

    https://archive.is/ccVWb

  • Birthright citizenship should never have been in question

    Source: Los Angeles Times
    by Erwin Chemerinsky

    “This should have been an easy case for the Supreme Court. When the Constitution was penned in 1787, the founders followed English law and determined that everyone born in the country was deemed a citizen. This was followed until the Supreme Court’s tragic 1857 decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which held that enslaved individuals were property of their owners and that they were not U.S. citizens, even if they had been born in the country. The first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to expressly and unquestionably overrule this decision.” (06/30/26)

    https://archive.is/rwWHy

  • The Economics of Reconciliation on America’s 250th Birthday

    Source: American Greatness
    by Edward Ring

    “On the advent of America’s 250th anniversary, the conventional narrative is that our country is deeply divided. Typical takes on the state of disunity in the United States include this headline from a guest op-ed that recently appeared in USA Today, ‘America celebrated together at 200. We won’t at 250’, and ‘We still had a sense of oneness then. We no longer do’. In a related news article, the publication cited major national surveys that ‘consistently show an anxious nation’ and ‘a divisive president’. These observations aren’t wrong, but the divisions they cite (partisan politics, old vs. young, racial polarization, bitter disagreements over social issues) are missing the biggest source of alienation of all, which is diminished economic opportunity. Fully half of American households report living paycheck to paycheck.” (07/01/26)

    https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/01/the-economics-of-reconciliation-on-americas-250th-birthday/

  • The Faulty Logic of the Anti-School Choice Position

    Source: Show-Me Institute
    by Cory Koedel

    “The anti-school choice position is usually framed as a defense of public education. But at its core, what it really does is defend a particular way of assigning students to schools: where you live determines where your children go to school. The strongest opponents of school choice oppose vouchers, charter schools, and interdistrict open enrollment. In effect, they argue it is best if families have only one option: the public school assigned to them by their residential address. The problem with this argument is that it ignores a simple fact: many families already exercise school choice by choosing where to live.” (06/30/26)

    https://showmeinstitute.org/article/education/the-faulty-logic-of-the-anti-school-choice-position/

  • The GOP Can’t Win on Ideas — So They’re Suing Our Candidates Off the Ballot

    Source: Libertarian National Committee
    by Evan McMahon

    “If you’re a Libertarian candidate in America right now, the Republican Party doesn’t want to debate you. They want to sue you. When Republicans know they can’t win on ideas, they resort to their favorite tactic: suppressing voter choice. Right now, GOP operatives are dragging our candidates into courtrooms in Florida, New Jersey, and Iowa. Not because our candidates did anything wrong, but because Republicans would rather clear the ballot than compete on it. In Iowa, they went even further. Before filing their legal challenges, GOP operatives and even HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally contacted our candidates for Congress and offered them enticements to drop out. When they refused, they challenged their paperwork. This is a coordinated national attack. And we will not stand for it.” (06/30/26)

    https://lp.org/the-gop-cant-win-on-ideas-so-theyre-suing-our-candidates-off-the-ballot/

  • World Loving Cup

    Source: Common Sense
    by Paul Jacob

    “‘I am loving that the World Cup has brought to our shores all these people,’ comedian Bill Maher told his Real Time audience on Friday, ‘who are doing Americans the service of reminding us — just when we needed it on our big 250 birthday — that actually this place is kind of awesome.’ What Maher celebrated could be seen on social media, mostly. One German fan — and the first many American X users have encountered — is @FreddyLA7; his success is instructive, saying that he hasn’t ‘met a single unfriendly person.'” (06/30/26)

    https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/06/30/world-loving-cup/

  • Socialists Tearing Through Democratic Party Establishment

    Source: In These Times
    by Miles Kampf-Lassin

    “This summer, a seismic wave ripped through the foundations of an ossified Democratic establishment as a swell of left-wing challengers channeled disgust at party elites to jolt the entire political system. On June 23, a slate of candidates emerged victorious with endorsements and support from the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. They toppled longtime incumbents and added fuel to the economic populist electoral movement that has been sweeping the country. Union organizer Claire Valdez won a race for an open seat in New York’s 7th District, encompassing swaths of Brooklyn and Queens, by more than 20 points while community activist Darializa Avila Chevalier took out Adriano Espaillat in NY-13, in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, and former comptroller Brad Lander (endorsed by Mamdani but not DSA) beat out Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10, in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, by more than 30 points.” (06/30/26)

    https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-socialists-dsa-mamdani-valdez-new-york-primary

  • One Voice: Gagging education board members

    Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
    by John Ellis

    “Many, many boards for school districts, community colleges, and public universities, and at least one state, have formal policies that limit board members from publicly criticizing actions taken by the boards, speaking to the press, or communicating on social media. These policies, often called ‘One Voice,’ have resulted in punishments of board members and lawsuits challenging those actions. The policies are propagated by dozens of consultants and education attorneys, state and national board associations, at least one accreditor, and the New Jersey Department of Education. The policies are surely unconstitutional for elected boards (school districts and community colleges), though that may not be as clear-cut for boards appointed by state government (most public universities). Regardless, they are horrid governance policies for educational institutions, set bad examples for the students they’re educating, and contribute to the deterioration of civic culture.” (06/30/26)

    https://www.fire.org/news/one-voice-gagging-education-board-members